Not in Dungeons and Dragons. Wisdom is intuition, you can roll a wisdom check to assess someone's emotional state from body language, sensing motives is a wisdom based skill, medical knowledge is wisdom based, perception is wisdom based, capacity to learn a standard profession is wisdom based...

But yes, IQ tests tend to correlate with each other, so there's some good evidence that they measure some underlying thing - which is called a g-factor. Some measures of EQ have decent construct validity too. There's much more overlap between IQ and intelligence (general knowledge, puzzle solving etc) than IQ with wisdom or charisma (force of character, way with words). There's a lot of overlap between EQ (sense motive, determining emotions) and wisdom, less with intelligence. A sage would probably have very high wisdom and quite high intelligence.

I think the Dungeons and Dragons analogy is surprisingly representative and nuanced.

I think Dungeons and Dragons represents it the best. Wizards (mathematicians, engineers, scientists etc) are typically high intelligence (IQ) and low (or middling) wisdom. Clerics (nurses, counsellors, social care workers etc) have high wisdom and low (or middling) intelligence.

I actually started the thread without many ideas of what SR or GR imply about philosophical positions (presentism, A-B-C series etc) regarding space and time. Someone (was it you?) brought up the idea that presentism implies a unique order of events, and I tried to argue that SR suggests very strongly that there isn't one (without restricting the application of SR). My intention for the thread was to discuss limitations that SR and GR place on philosophical interpretations of space/time and motion.

Even if it's granted that SR and GR don't really provide a theory of time, they will still place some constraints on what a sensible ontology of space, time and motion could look like. My hope for the thread was to tease out the constraints.

Oooh.... Example please, because this seems totally implausible. What is 'our history'? Sure, if we colonize distant stars, event ordering starts getting ambiguous, but it doesn't take a distant observer to notice that. So presume our history is confined to this planet, and we're not just talking about milisecond differences that it takes for light to traverse the diameter of the planet. Sure, events on opposite sides of the planet within a milisecond of each other have frame dependent ordering, but again, it doesn't take a distant observer to notice that.

Events have to have a space-like interval between them in order for there to exist a reference frame in which the order is mucked with. This can be taken to imply that the possible reshuffling of indices has no physical meaning since to be in causal contact would require that events can't occur before their causes, and this is only guaranteed if two events have a time-like interval between them. But regardless, say event 1 occurs at $t_1$ and event 2 occurs at $t_2$. Also assume that $t_1$ and $t_2$ have a space-like distance between them. That is:

$d\tau^2 = dt^2 - \frac{dx^2}{c^2} \lt 0$ for 1D motion.

It's a mathematician's proof, but $dt$ can be freely set to 0 and you still get a valid reference frame, that is $(t_1 \geq t_2)$. Section 4.6 here discusses space-like intervals and this property. Points that satisfy this property must be outside the light-cone of a particle in a reference frame.

If we're restricted to consider things which are useful for predictions (the weak sense of physical models), then I'd say at this point it's arguably useless for considering space-like or light-like intervals between things since they don't preserve the order of cause and effect in a temporal series. What's interesting ontologically though, is if there is a reason besides convenience and satisfaction of pre-theoretic intuitions for restricting 'valid reference frames for comparing events' to events that have time-like intervals between them. I'm leaning no on this. Prosaically, the perspective of a photon or of a (pathologically) distant motion is just as valid a reference frame sub specie aeternitatis as ones which preserve our causal orders.

So what's needed is a good account of causal connection and its relationship to space-time, a way to truncate the phenomena of relativity's relevance. I think this would begin with thinking of the light-cone as a partition of space-time between causally connected components; and would be aided by thinking of $d\tau^2$ as a quantity which can represent the possibility of causal connection between events.

125's quite above average. About 1 in 20. It's easy to forget differences in the kind of intelligence IQ measures if you're in a career like engineering, programming etc etc where people are very likely to have significantly above average speed/competence with IQ test style questions.

I like Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy for philosophy, Wiki is often surprisingly detailed and can have good references too. For work, I've got a few books that I've used a lot: 'Matrix Computations' by Golub and Van Loan which is a Bible for dealing with matrices, 'Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel/Hierarchical Models' by Andrew Gelman for statistics.

Also MITOpencourseware, Khan Academy and Stanford have a good Youtube presence for mathematics in general. The number of times I've had to look something basic up on Khan is very high.

The irony did have a purpose, it was an attempt to get anyone who thought removing voting rights from the disabled, or making them conditional, to think of themselves as the other - subject to the restrictions. Some of the questions on that literacy test are, ironically, very poorly worded.

'Cross out the number necessary, when making the number below one million' really? Paragons of clarity and precision!

Sure, logically possible. I ain't believing in it though.

Consistently off topic nonsense.

One property of relativity is that from any given event X, there is a fixed set of events in its direct past and future causal cones, and this set is frame independent. OK, the frame of Zog puts 2017 in my future, but I don't exist in that frame, so no contradiction.

Because this is interesting, let's have some maths for it.

The quantity 'proper time' is invariant between inertial reference frames. Assuming 1 dimensional linear motion, this quantity is:

$d\tau^2 = dt^2 - \frac{dx^2}{c^2}$

If $d\tau^2\gt0$ between two events occurring at $t_1$ and $t_2$, then the separation between the events is called time-like. This occurs, roughly, when the temporal separation between two events is greater than their spatial separation.

Assume these two events (A and B at $t_1$ and $t_2$ have time-like separation, then:

$d \tau ^2 = (t_1-t_2)^2 - \frac{(x_1 - x_2)^2}{c^2}\gt0$
which gives
$c^2 (t_1 - t_2)^2 \gt (x_1 - x_2)^2$
if we wanted to find a frame of reference in which $t_2$ occurred before $t_1$, reversing the inequality here, it would need squared average velocity:

$c^2 \lt \frac{(x_1 - x_2)^2}{(t_1 - t_2)^2}$

which can't happen, since it would be higher than $c^2$. So, if two events have a time-like separation, there does not exist an inertial frame which has their ordering reversed. Another consequence is that all events occur simultaneously for light. The orders can reverse for space like intervals - when $d\tau^2$ is negative.

Thus, two events can be said to be in causal contact if they are in time-like separation, but not in space-like separation. And two observers using the same reference frame, regardless of what it is, will agree on the ordering of events. Since the Earth is small with respect to the distance light could have travelled since Earth's inception, and since the movements of humans are nowhere near the speed of light, special relativity is consistent with the ordering of events as considered from our Earthly perspective. But not necessarily about exactly when events occurred - this is still velocity dependent.

From the perspective of light, there is no duration. From other perspectives, there is duration. A very distant observer moving in a particular way could see our history with some events in a different order. Why should the universe be seen from the perspective of a human, and not a photon or a distant observer (with space-like separation)?

If something supplanted the verified predictions of SR that nevertheless had such an ordering, I would believe it. But I think that SR does a lot to undermine the existence of a unique total ordering of events - so I doubt that a conceptual manoeuvre which introduces a universal time without caveats would be a justified one.

Earlier in the thread, I pointed out that for speeds not close to the speed of light, SR reconciles with usual relative motion. The Lorentz transform tends to the identity transform and proper time tends to time. I think this suggests that any naturalistic metaphysics currently has to have a procedure for regionalisation: that is different regimes of phenomena should be allowed to have different constitutive dynamics.

I can agree that it suggests that there is none, but I will withhold from using strong words like "impossible" here. I believe there is reason from relativity that supports the rejection of presentism, but I think it is a common misconception that relativity is completely incompatible with it.

Great, then the conceptual work is done. It's more justified to believe that SR suggests there can be no unique objective ordering of events than not.

So long as the boundary doesn't get so advanced one place that events happen before their causes, there's no contradiction. Light cones limit the maximum distortion of the boundary.

This is a fun way to smuggle in an objective ordering without justification. Why would it be contradictory for an event to happen before its cause as viewed from some reference frame? Contained within the series of cause and effect is the universal succession, only this time of equivalence classes of causes occurring before a given ordinate in the series.

The construction is something like:
$\{ \text{events which can be causes after } t \} = x_t = \{\text{events occurring before }t\}$

Inertial frames are inappropriate to apply to regions of space with non-negligible intrinsic curvature (derived from energy/momentum density). Nevertheless, away from these masses and near the speed of light, GR reduces to SR - the metric tensor tends to the Minkowski tensor.

It says there is a unique objective ordering, not a unique ordering. None of the SR orderings are objective.

Ok. What differentiates an objective ordering from one in obtaining in a reference frame in special relativity?

Arbitrary, yes, but again, not impossible. There is a difference between the two. To be impossible means that it is in some sense logically contradictory. I do not see that here.

Logical possibility isn't a particularly good criterion for forming metaphysical postulates. Any metaphysics is likely to be logically possible. Any physical theory is likely to be logically possible. We need a finer net to capture what is relevant.

What matters is what SR does to the idea of there being a unique ordering of events (time as the succession)- it shows that there is none. If there is no unique ordering, there can be no unique objective ordering. The class of orderings that agree with all other orderings is empty, so none can be objective.

Or alternatively, they're all objective (since there are none that are not objective).

Neither of these interpretations of the consequences of SR is consistent with the idea that there is a unique objective ordering of events.

One can just simply treat one reference frame as being privileged over the others as the basis for absolute rest. Now, is it arbitrary to do so? Certainly, but there is nothing stopping us from doing so anyways and this does not conflict with SR as a scientific model.

The arbitrariness of the reference frame used for the definition of universal time removes the possibility of interpreting its time variable as a universal time. All reference frames have just as good a candidate for universal time. That is to say: they all suck for it.

(P & Q) --> ~R : R --> (P --> ~Q)

I've used theorem intro and missed a few steps, if you needed to you could prove the theorems:
(A) (P->Q) <-> (~P or Q) <-> (~Q->~P)
(B) ~(P & Q) <-> (~P or ~Q)

(1) Assume P&Q --> ~R
(2) Assume R
(3) Z-->U |- ~U --> ~Z (theorem intro, modus ponens->modus tollens in A (first and last equivalence)
(3) R-->~(P&Q) (1,3)
(4)~(P&Q)->(~P or ~Q) (theorem intro, from B, de morgan's law)
(5) ~(P&Q) (2,3)
(6) (~P or ~Q) (theorem intro from A, first and second equivalence)
(7) (P->~Q) (theorem intro from A, second and 3 equivalence + double negation elimination)
(8) R--> (P-->~Q) (2,7)

Changed key question sentence to be more precise:

What stops the following from being inferred from special relativity: there is no unique objective ordering of events with respect to time.

That there is a unique ordering of events with respect to time is something that is false because of the special theory of relativity. So time cannot be the succession of events. Within the same space of concepts, it could be seen as a succession of events.

What stops the following from being inferred from special relativity: there is no unique objective ordering of events with respect to time.

This is not the kind of thing we would expect to see if metaphysics and science had no interface - that they could not influence each other.

. And #2 should be "depending on the reference frame", not depending on particle motion. Motion

Reference frames can be attached to moving particles. This is what the Lorentz transform is for, and what the equivalence principle allows; considering motion of a particle to be at rest with respect to the reference frame of that particle's motion.

Presentism doesn't comment about how time works in SR. Presentism was around well over a century ago, and SR was not in any way suggested by it. Not sure when the term was coined, since the interpretation is far older than the name needed to distinguish it from alternative interpretations.

I agree that presentism doesn't imply SR. What I'm saying is that insofar as presentism claims that there is a unique objective ordering of events, it is contradicted by SR.

I certainly think it's possible to think that there is a real unique ordering of events by rejecting relativity. But I don't think it's possible to think that there is a real unique ordering of events while accepting relativity.

Adopting a specific reference frame, or class of reference frame, can be useful in inducing an order of events relative to a process - like picking coordinate systems in which the expansion of the universe is spherically symmetric for probing the age of the universe - but this doesn't negate anything from SR.

I think the more interesting endeavour, rather then debating whether presentism is true or not, or accepting or rejecting SR based on previously held principles, is to try to make sense of its implications in a naturalistic metaphysics, and what constraints they place on metaphysics of space and time.

I'd draw the following conclusions from SR and GR:

(1) Space, time and motion are distinct but inseparable, no two should be taken as a derivative category or combination of the other.
(2) Time cannot be thought of as a unique succession of events, as this is contradicted by the real motion of objects.
(3) Despite of (2), time can be immanently defined within a process to study its history. Perhaps different coordinate frames can be thought of as immanent definitions of space and time with respect to motion or mass.
(4) Space cannot be considered as an unconditioned field of pure extension, since motion doesn't just happen through it over time, motion and mass change space itself.
(5) The behaviour of space and time is induced by motion and mass, the former being extrinsic properties of space/time and the latter giving intrinsic properties of space/time.
(6) Different metaphysics may be appropriate depending on whether SR or GR are in play or not, SR isn't very relevant for slow moving objects or intrinsically curved space, GR isn't very relevant when there is no intrinsic curvature to space.

Methodologically, there are some interesting implications of (6): different domains of things (in the broadest sense) may require different ontologies. This is why I posted previously in terms of regional ontologies of SR and GR.

I see it as intellectually lazy to posit metaphysics as independent from science, much more interesting to attempt a naturalistic metaphysics which is informed by current scientific theories. Rather than, say, dogmatic adherence to Aristotelian physics or New Age Quantum Woo.

Emoticons are cheating. Also, nice post.

Relativity is a scientific theory born of empirical observations. Presentism is a metaphysical interpretation of time, not a scientific theory at all. It has zero falsification tests, as do all interpretations. If such a test (a difference between 4D block and 3D universe) could be proposed and performed, then it could be elevated beyond interpretation and one or the other could be falsified. Meanwhile, relativity would stand because it works the exact same way in both interpretations.

I don't see how these two things can be compatible:
(1) There is a unique order of events induced by the idea of the present in presentism.
(2) Events A and B can be ordered differently depending on the motion of a particle.

I don't understand how you can say 'presentism is independent because it's metaphysics', when one of its implications is negated by how time works in SR.

Sarcasm doesn't transfer very well to strangers over the internet does it? :(

Yes of course, the degenerates.

Of course they should. We wouldn't want to get our lovely ballots spit stained by those drooling retards.

Beliefs are not utterances. So there are some complexities here.

Do you think that beliefs are necessarily derived from utterances?

People with an IQ lower than 125 shouldn't be allowed to vote. Period. They contribute nothing to society, have no awareness of what's going on around them, and can't form the most meagre of insights about what effects them.

Everyone below an IQ of 125 should be made, by law, to give their voting rights over to a friend who has at least that IQ, and those without friends of at least 125 IQ will have their votes assigned randomly to positions. Since they're basically monkeys throwing shit at the wall anyway.

Well, if you're happy to adopt the rules and stay on topic, I would've at least read your responses.

No, I just don't trust you or Rich to have anything I would find worthwhile to say on the topic.

All true. Presentism just says that there is an objective correct answer as to which of A or B happens first. Relativity supplies frame dependent answers, not objective ones.

And you don't think that simultaneity is a frame dependent phenomenon refutes the idea of there being an objectively correct answer to whether A is before B? Why or why not?

Right. Tidal forces is effectively a non-local experiment. Make the box big enough and the mass close enough, and tides can be felt. In SR, it doesn't matter if one of the frames is special since that special nature is undetectable, and thus moot just like it doesn't matter to the elevator guy how the force being applied to his box is linear acceleration or bent space. Either way he holds his cup this way to prevent the drink from spilling. That's my point, that the reality behind the experience doesn't matter. It makes no useful predictions either way.

I think we agree on this. So long as you're not going to say that from the equivalence of motions we should posit one reference frame as privileged. I think you agree that such a decision has no consequences, and it doesn't mean anything to index motion to one privileged reference frame. The procedure for doing that is also antithetical to the logic of SR and GR.

Don't know what the latter is. Events are points in spacetime, not in time. Not trivial to order them, but it would be trivial to order moments in time.

It's trivial to order them within a given reference frame, not trivial to order them when multiple are being considered. Think it's impossible to provide a total order of events consistent with all motions, I saw you agreed with my argument that this is the case, so I don't think we need to discuss a total order without respect to a reference frame more.

All true. Presentism just says that there is an objective correct answer as to which of A or B happens first. Relativity supplies frame dependent answers, not objective ones.

Do you conclude that relativity thus refutes presentism?

So as for your comment above, no, A and B are not simultaneous just because some frame exists where they are. They're only simultaneous in that frame, and not in some other frame where they're ordered A first or B first. One can rotate the paper at will to put C above or below B in the time dimension (my events B and C were potentiall simultaneous in my paper example. A and B were inside each other's light cones and B is unambiguously after A).

Great, this is another convergence in how we see it. I think, anyway.

Comoving time is such an ordering. Essentially, for every event in spacetime, the actual time there is the age of the universe in the frame that maximizes that age, or in which the red shift of distant objects (most notably the CMB) is isotropic. Same thing. That age is an objective one, and provides an objective ordering of all events.

Comoving coordinates are those in which the expansion of the universe is uniform in every direction. So a measure of proper time between particles tagged to comoving frames would be a time measure with respect to the expansion of the universe. This makes good sense as a vantage point with which to define cosmological time. So when people speak about the age of the universe, we're speaking about it with respect to the history of intrinsic changes to its space.

However, there's nothing saying that this perspective must be adopted for all phenomena, and it does not remove the shenanigans relativistic motion induces on temporal orderings of events. The age of the universe is certainly a relevant parameter with respect to cosmic expansion, but it renders other motions untouched. That is to say, the sense of time derived from considering comoving frames must be conceptually consistent with the ability to induce changes in event orders by motion. There are real trajectories with which the expansion of the universe looks different.

What difference can an undetectable thing make to practice? In what way is the latter 'elevated'?

I was meaning something like the following: the equivalence principle in SR is essentially that motion is always relative motion - which introduces coordinate transforms - constrained by a cosmic speed limit -which introduces the scaling factors. In GR the equivalence principle is essentially between gravitation and an accelerated (that is curvilinear) coordinate system, and that intrinsic curvature is introduced by mass.

One of the motivating examples for the equivalence principle is the elevator thought experiment. Someone in an elevator could not tell the difference between the elevator moving down with constant acceleration due to a cord and the elevator moving down with constant acceleration due to a gravitational field. If you ignore tidal forces, there's nothing the person in the elevator could do to see if their acceleration is cord based or gravitation based.

In SR, this kind of thing manifests in equivalence between a rocket moving away from a planet with constant speed and the planet moving away from the rocket with constant speed.

I was trying to say that the undetectability of the difference between the relata in any equivalence principle should not be interpreted as an epistemic property, the equivalence in descriptions should be interpreted to be as real as its consequences - such as the relativity of simultaneity and length contraction. These things really happen and are not mere artefacts of coordinate system choice.

It is an ordering of events, and not otherwise specifying full coordinates. This event is simultaneous with that one, and prior to that third one over there. A foliation of the universe must order all events, not just local ones like an inertial reference frame does.

A foliation of space-time is a lot different from a foliation of time, you were referring solely to the latter? I don't understand how this is possible, given that in some reference frames event A can happen before B and in some event B can happen before event A - and there can be no strict total order (like <) with this property. How would you construct a foliation to produce a time which obeyed this?

One possibility would be to say that if there exist two events A and B, that they occur at the same time if and only if there exists a coordinate system in which they do occur at the same time. Or that there exists a coordinate system in which A is before B and B is before A. Of course coordinate systems exist in which B can be said to have occurred any time before A or B by adopting the frame of a particle with a particular motion (you can solve the Lorentz equations for v). But I think that this conception of time inappropriately quantifies over reference frames, and destroys the relativity of simultaneity. That is to say, simultaneity in SR is simultaneity in a reference frame, and the solvability of the Lorentz transform for arbitrary t shows that the ordered pairs of events in any such order are incompatible with a total order; unless time is trivialised in the sense that all events occur at the same time (which isn't presentism or a block universe).

So, the question is whether an order produced by such a foliation would resemble anything like a universal time. I'm not convinced that there is such an ordering, could you provide some references for where you're getting this from? I think you're losing too much detail when thinking of foliations as an order.

Undetectable is what the equivalence principle states, no?. Just because something is undetectable doesn't mean it isn't there. Hey, I'm not arguing for it, just against this being a proof against it. I personally favor a block view, and no ontology to it at all.

I don't think an undetectable in principle difference should be elevated to a difference in practice.

No GR prohibitions anyway. SR perhaps not, but it describes a flat massless spacetime that doesn't correspond to reality. I.E. no inertial reference frame foliates the universe, so none can be the correct one. Inertial frames are local, and the universe is not. There are objects that can actually be seen that do not exist in our inertial frame since they are, in our frame, simultaneous with a time before the big bang. Talking about stuff near the edge of the visible universe that "has since" (<-- questionable use of verb tense) passed beyond the Hubble Sphere which confines events even remotely valid in our reference frame. Hence the curved foliation with is not a reference frame at all, but covers all the universe.

I'm assuming 'foliates' here means, essentially, 'providing a coordinate system for'. And the way in X foliates Y is always done differentiably (my differential geometry-fu isn't particularly strong). So I'm thinking of a foliation as the thing which describes the rate of change of an application of a coordinate system to a locality with respect to infinitesimal shifts in its origin.

There are objects that can actually be seen that do not exist in our inertial frame since they are, in our frame, simultaneous with a time before the big bang.

So at time t they were in the Hubble volume, and at some time t' they expanded out of it? That's the picture?

Hence the curved foliation with is not a reference frame at all, but covers all the universe.

What implications do you draw from this? I've said previously that there are still things which can be said about spacetime in general with respect to increasing time - like the expansion of space when the metric tensor is an increasing function of time. I interpret foliations as ways of setting up for questions like this - they will provide a system of coordinates in which the evolution with respect to some variable, probably time in this case, can be indexed.

I don't think this makes length contraction or time dilation go away, but it does implicate some notion similar to universal time in the pre-theoretic sense. Regardless, how would you think of this time without destroying the relativisation of time/space through motion? I doubt the right answer is through an assertion against the relativisation of simultaneity (which screws with time = the succession of events), or against the way space expands/contracts relative to motion (which screws with its identification with pure extension).

All this is pretty much a description of flat Minkowski spacetime. At no point does something move across the paper, and orienting the paper different does not make any real change to what is drawn on it.

Aha, I see what you mean. You're providing a demonstrative example of motion in 1 spatial dimension and 1 temporal dimension, not saying space and time can be thought of as physically 1 space 1 time in general.

The rest was just an example of the conservation of proper time.

Two events are not ambiguously ordered. If one frame orders them differently, that frame is not the preferred one and it orders events incorrectly. Two events simultaneous in that frame are not in fact simultaneous, and thus there are no future events that exists. The frames that put you simultaneous with those future events are simply wrong about their designation of simultaneity.

I don't think this is true. If it were legitimate to axiomatically posit a preferred frame of reference with which to define all motion relative to, it'd be a consequence. I think the absence of a preferred reference frame is an implication of the equivalence principle - what would be the point in stressing the transformability of motion to equivalent forms if the only purpose was to index all motion again to an arbitrary origin point? Why should any one ordering of events be more true than another?

In other words, nothing changes about relativistic computations if there is a preferred reference frame for any given motion, so there being a preferred reference frame is something out-with the influence of the theory. An arbitrary decision about space-time should not structure how we think about it.

Your post takes the view that a predicate equivalent to 'is the true reference frame' is something that can be appended to a reference frame, this is something SR and GR prohibit from having any ontological import.

If I've understood you and it, anyway.

I wasn't referring to anything like that. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that relativity doesn't necessitate a 4D block universe. It is certainly possible for us to view time in the traditional sense, as a 3D world that changes via. the passage of time though there are costs to that sort of view.

Yeah, I don't think a block universe is necessitated by the conceptual structure of relativity either. I spelled out what I thought were the ontological consequences of it in my reply to SLX. If you want to think of blocks because of space and time being conjoined, it relativises the blocks to individual motions - something I find pretty cool.

Velocity is the slope of the worldline of some object. Relativity works in block or in 3D view, so the ontological difference is interpretation with no empirical difference. Relativity was born of the observation that the worldline of a photon has the same slope regardless of assignment of coordinate system. That fact is not a necessary property of Minkowski spacetime, so block universe is not necessarily relativistic.

So you're saying that a block universe is neither implied by or implies either relativity? I think I agree with this, but I don't understand how you're using four-velocity in the presentation. Can you give me some more words please?

I'd also really like to see an abbreviated form of the post you made on another forum.

Just a side note in the convo: I remember SR being treated as a minor point to GR in my physics class. SR was the sort of thing which we learned to do in order to be able to accept GR, or understand it. We, however, did not delve into GR since it required mathematics beyond what the SR class required. I only mention this because my take away was that SR wasn't meant to be taken ontologically (from a scientific realist perspective), only GR was -- in some sense GR reduced to or was "in line" with SR. I wish I could say more than that but alas I was a chemist (interested in philosophy, I hope thats obvious) and not a physicist.

One of the minute-physics videos on special relativity highlights this. Special relativity isn't treated as a topic worthy of study on its own - despite showing up in particle physics. From memories speaking with physicist friends at university, its teaching was highly idiosyncratic and it's not presented in a general form.

I don't think this implies that it's not worthy of study or philosophical interpretation, especially since it's a less complicated form of general relativity - I think you get some interesting constraints on naturalistic metaphysics by trying to make it consistent with special relativity alone. But of course, it'd also be interesting to make it consistent with GR - more work too.

I interpreted noAxioms as suggesting that it's possible to interpret things in a way that made 3 dimensions of space & time combined. Don't see much of a problem with there being different rates of development of phenomena depending on reference frame - that's just using the chain rule in calculus. IE, differentiating x by time in another frame would (dx/dT)(dT/dt).

I didn't make much of the 'timeless space' paper, I'm sure interesting things do happen when you discretise space to the nearest Plank length, but seeing time as a weird dimension of space has always been possible and even suggested by the consequences of treating it as an extensional dimension as well as an order of events. Einstein did this himself, it's a consequence of past-present-future being mucked with by the transforms. I don't think it's warranted to say 'this is all there is to say about time' on the basis of those theories, but I can see why someone would think time was illusory if 'the succession of events' has been destroyed.

I think this actually speaks quite nicely to Bergson's point here re: what I referred to as a desubstantialization of time: to the degree that every space-time block is relative to the trajectory of it's localising elements, what is missing or simply untheorized is precisely the passage from one trajectory to another. In other words what is missing, or rather, what is simply assumed is time itself. Time is 'given': given this space-time trajectory, that is the corresponding space-time block. But the passage of time itself is precisely what takes place 'before' (logically speaking) STR 'kicks in', as it were.

I find a lot to agree with, but I wanna place some extra emphasis on the strengths of the theory. I believe it is informative to a naturalistic metaphysics - at least insofar as it rules out various ontological postulates.

For probably the first time since the old PF, I'll be using my own idiosyncratic concepts a lot. So bear with me.

The only thing I find disagreeable in this is that passage from one trajectory to another is internalised through the equivalence principle. Say we consider two frames of reference whose equations of motion are given by sets F1 and F2, there is a relativised form wherein velocity is mapped to relative velocity, accelerations are mapped to relative accelerations and so on - these allow the translation of specific space time trajectories to one another.

I don't think this is a merely epistemic property of SR, I think it's essentially a statement of relational closure of motion in the regional ontology of SR. Will digress on relational closure to make some sense of it, as it's a term I use when thinking about things like this. Discussing what a regional ontology is will follow.

If someone believes in a transcendent God, they stand in a relation to that God. Specifically X believes that {some set of properties obtain about that God}. If it is really that transcendent God which is related to, how is possible for something 'exterior to being' in substantive senses or 'logically prior to it' in others to relate to any particular? The impossibility of this I term relational closure, relata are always existent in some commensurable way, and moreover there must be an overlap of the modes of being/becoming of the relata in the relation.

This is to say - different trajectories of motion in SR, whatever their sense of time - have common modes of expression, and specifically the relations in this case are the mapping of velocities to relative velocities and coordinate systems to others. There's no external 'space of trajectories' to go to for any regional ontology of SR. I don't mean 'SR gives a good account of aging' or 'SR gives an account which involves human reaction time' or anything to do with evolution, which have their own regionalised notions of time, just that trying to find a sort of movement which isn't described well by SR in its own terms is pretty hard, if not impossible. You can find examples by going close to very dense objects, however, and in these cases GR takes over.

For regional ontology, I refer to the specific mode of being of a designated class of phenomena. The only classes which can have regional ontologies devoted to them are ones with relational closure. I think this is similar to 'creating concepts on a plane of immanence' in Deleuze (or as it's thought of by Daniel Coffeen). Further, developing a regional ontology of a class of phenomena corresponds to the study of how it relates its subunits, and how those relations relate.

It's in this sense that coordinate transformations in SR are not just principles of relations of the objects in SR, they're also the means by which the relations are related. The generation of all of these relations for the regional ontology of SR comes from two principles, the cosmic speed limit of light and the equivalence between relative motion and (Lorentz) coordinate transformations (the equivalence principle). Everything follows from those building blocks.

That said, the passage of time can be said to be presumed in SR and GR insofar as it is primitive in the relations of SR and GR - it's a dimension of a vector space, which when combined with others (space) it produces/models the relativisation of time and space through the category of motion. Not simply in the sense that 'motion is space change over time' or that 'motion is change', but it effects the hows of both - motion as such, just as time as such is not part of the regional ontology.

One cannot draw a temporal ontology from it without losing the very thing it ought to account for: time.

In some senses, yes, in some senses no. Heidegger treats regional and fundamental ontology in a similar manner, attempting to ground regionalised things like moods and language in more primordial things like self-direction and the interpretive-as-structure. But I think this is an idealist way of looking at it - as if the ontology of Dasein was derived from but not conditioned by its ontic realisations. Similarly, SR does place a few constraints on what an ontology of space, time and motion should look like; how it deals with motion as such, time as such and space as such. By as such here I still mean in a somewhat constrained sense relating to physical properties and material flows.

(1) Time itself should be considered as something which can interact with its own unfolding, considering that motion may change its rate of unfolding.

(2) Space itself should be considered as something inseparable from time and vice versa, otherwise space-time curvature doesn't make sense.

(3) Motion itself should be considered as more than an analytic composite of time and space, since it effects the unfolding of its constitutive objects and itself. It is both a relational category of time and space as well as a phenomenon effecting both.

(1),(2),(3) together mark space,time and motion as of equivalent logical priority. Ontologies should treat them as distinct but inseparable.

There are also more specific conclusions that can be drawn:

(A) Time as such cannot be subordinated to a notion of event succession, since temporal orders of events are relativised to motion. The event-clock of the universe can be fickle.
(B) Space as such cannot be subordinated to extension, as time is implicated within it (and vice versa) and these things all change depending on what is analysed. There is a little wrinkle here in terms of treating time as an extensional dimension as well as an index of events, but axiomatically positing the two as the same is what happens when you make it a dimension of the space-time vector space.

Another thing relativity teaches us is that a different regional ontology is needed for the every-day. That is, non-relativistic thinking. We can't ignore the various limiting theorems that reduce GR to SR and SR to Newton. In this realm temporal order is preserved. Our technology can push us past scenarios of the every-day, however, but the effects of it are usually confined (like in the LHC) or very small (like clock differences on transpacific flights). In other words, we can't say that the ontology of GR and SR is a complete account of their contained concepts, even though there is a large region of overlap between their respective 'as such' categories and the theories. They do quite a lot to explain various phenomena in the universe, and so should be treated with respect within their zones of relevance.

Another big thing to note is that experiential time, and the relation of experiential time to physical time, are largely untouched by both.

I don't think you payed much attention to the link you gave me Rich. The presence of dark energy has implications for the cosmological constant.

One explanation for dark energy is that it is a property of space. Albert Einstein was the first person to realize that empty space is not nothing. Space has amazing properties, many of which are just beginning to be understood. The first property that Einstein discovered is that it is possible for more space to come into existence. Then one version of Einstein's gravity theory, the version that contains a cosmological constant, makes a second prediction: "empty space" can possess its own energy. Because this energy is a property of space itself, it would not be diluted as space expands. As more space comes into existence, more of this energy-of-space would appear. As a result, this form of energy would cause the universe to expand faster and faster. Unfortunately, no one understands why the cosmological constant should even be there, much less why it would have exactly the right value to cause the observed acceleration of the universe.

That there are unknowns on the frontiers of scientific research, especially when those flaws are known and researched by those researchers, is not just normal science functioning, it's close to being analytically true. These unknowns are linked to known things, and that set of relationships lets researchers tease out things from the unknown. Physics and cosmology are not yet degenerate research programs, and the puzzling nature of dark energy and dark matter are being researched in a manner consistent with normal science. Specifically here, afaik, attempting to study these phenomena in terms of different field theories or as consequences of the cosmological constant/metric term in the field equations.

No reason to think that they're degenerating, really. Since successive theories about them are still theoretically progressive (in the expansive form in this case), and there are competing research programs vying for 'the best account' of dark energy and matter. Normal science going on here. Dark energy and dark matter, far from being surface effects of scientific ignorance, are part of the core of scientific research in these areas.

You're not doing a very good job of pooping on science this time. So:

how do you think of space and time? How does relativity enter into it?

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

People have found things out about dark energy and dark matter. Neither the existence of dark matter nor dark energy are errors in physical theories, they are predictions. Where flaws or disagreements lay are in their properties - like the amount of dark energy and the particle-constitution of dark matter. When a better way of thinking about them or their constituents is discovered, it will become part of the scientific 'canon' you dislike so much. Their existences aren't illusions of the theory, Rich, they're very likely to be real - and that can be seen from the current state of the theories.

Completely inappropriate to characterise them as illusions. Also see rule 2.

Just a general note: to categorise something as an illusion is pointless without trying to spell out why it is an illusion and how the illusion came to be; also how the illusion works. As if inscribing something in a mental or transcendental register removed the need to account for how it works.

I made some notes discussing this in terms of relativity.

GR and SR do have a single time direction in them, only it's a 'proper time' which is composed of differentials of time and differentials of space/the speed of light. That absolutely has a direction in both of them. If it was reversed, energies associated with masses and momenta can become negative. Proper time also tends to usual time when things are moving slowly relative to the speed of light in SR, and also when there's not much curvature in space in GR.

Material processes on earth - chemical, biological, behavioural - generally don't care so much that time is relativised -of the mapping from time to proper time-, since the frames they occur within don't have relative velocities approaching the speed of light. In these cases the Lorentz transform is effectively the identity transform - it does nothing; and the field equations of general relativity reduce to Newton's force laws (with tiny corrections that only show up if you're measuring things with a crazy amount of precision).

This is why differential equations describing transport of various chemicals around cells, or age related notions like 'age-cohorts' aren't perturbed by SR or GR - anything relativity has to say about them is so similar to what a 'universal time' would produce it becomes a difference that makes no difference.

The theories themselves reduce to usual Newtonian mechanics in low-speed low-curvature/mass scenarios. Luckily, this is the world we find ourselves in - most of the time - on Earth. And it is within this order of things that most processes unfold.

Usual conceptions of simultaneity still apply, usual conceptions of space still apply, for the majority of processes on Earth (on large enough length scales). The conception of simultaneity and invariant distances are not illusions in most scenarios, but they do produce transcendental illusions when applied outside of their scope. Special and general relativity are good descriptions of their target phenomena, empirically, and their influence cannot be removed by mistaking the subjective necessity (a-priority) of some antithetical concepts as the empirical failure of these theories.

Much better to see how things are and think about that, rather than begin from (what is purportedly) pure reason and constrain existence to its edicts.

AFAIK dark matter is considered to be currently unobserved particles. Neutrinos used to be part of this before their measurement. AFAIK, there are loads of undiscovered and possibly unreal particles conjectured from different analysis in contemporary particle physics. It should be stressed that the amount of dark matter is a consequence of the models, not a (possibly temporary) epistemic limitation. In contrast to its composition, which AFAIK is still within the sphere of conjecture.

Similarly with dark energy, it's a part of contemporary physics, and the consequences of amounts of it are modelled. But with dark energy the amount is problematic, apparently some things predict there to be a lot more dark energy than there is.

In general, I don't know enough to comment here, other than providing a repudiation of claims that 'it's all nonsense look at dark energy and matter!', and that it's pointless to consider the effects of SR and GR on the ontology of space and time because dark matter and energy are too weird.

If you have anything about dark-matter or dark-energy that should matter in the substantive/procedural interpretation of space and time, give it a go. I'd ask, though, that you don't reduce space and time to cognitive structures, as if that would provide an account of how they work.